A New House
by AngelInWhite
Summary: Five years after Wilson's death, House has moved on - a new hospital, a new team and a new life. With every bridge he's ever built burnt to ash, it can't be long until someone starts to rebuild the connections between his old life and his new one. And when they do, what sort of effects will it have? Spoilers for all eight seasons. Set after 'Everybody Dies'.
1. Chapter 1

Firstly, I am not a doctor. All medical knowledge used in this fic is from the internet or medical dramas, so don't take it seriously. I have tried to make it as real as possible, though. Secondly, any non-canon characters, along with all storylines, are original – Baker, Lyle, Hartwood, Taylor, English and all patients are figments of my imaginations. Finally, I do not own House, though I wish I did, and this story will include spoilers from all eight seasons, along with my ideal version of what happened to all the canon characters after 'Everybody Dies'. Set after the finale.

"What have we got today, ducklings?"

The three white-cloaked doctors who were sitting around the wooden table looked up from their files and coffee mugs to see a limping shape stumble through the door, the sound of his cane on the floor a repetitive thud.

"16-year-old white female. Lost consciousness after she fell off a balance beam," replied one, a dark-haired, bright-eyed American as he pushed the medical file across the table.

"And we care?" retorted the oldest of the four, leaning on his cane.

"That's what-"

"She's been experiencing double-vision and temporary, intermittent facial paralysis for roughly three weeks. Her room is 'spinning', apparently," interrupted the female doctor who was sitting at the table, leaning back in her chair and staring at the three others with clear blue eyes.

"Has she been put on any meds in the past month?" asked the last, flicking hair out of his brown eyes.

"Only mild anti-antidepressants for mood swings," replied the woman.

"Symptom?"

"No way," she shot back. "Try hormones. She's a teenager. Her parents are just overreacting."

"ER ruled out concussion?" asked the limping doctor as he walked up to the whiteboard and picked up the black marker, scribbling symptoms on as his team spoke: _Double vision, facial paralysis_

"Without a CT," replied the dark-haired doctor. "The paralysis could be causing the double vision – weak facial muscles cause her eyes to point at different angles and causes double vision."

The limping doctor stopped scribbling on the board and turned on his cane, waving the hand with the pen in.

"Hartwood, this is where you tell me what caused the face paralysis and we all go home," he clarified.

"Um…," Hartwood fumbled, glancing around for help, but none was offered. "Head trauma?"

"Not likely," answered the female doctor.

"Infection," he corrected. "Causes inflammation in the facial nerves. Explains everything."

"Hartwood, Taylor, go treat with broad-spectrum antibiotics-" the two men pushed their chairs back and stood up. "-And, Lyle, find me a new case. I don't trust these two."

"I wouldn't either," replied Lyle, standing up and dropping the closed file on the table.

Standing up, the three doctors looked quite different to each other – Lyle, who's milky-brown hair was pulled back into a loose ponytail, with strands falling into her face – stood a head shorter than Hartwood, who had floppy black hair and bright orange-y eyes and a clean-shaven face. Finally, Taylor, who was making his way to the door, had blond-brown hair that let loose the occasional strand to fall into his cloudy green eyes. The door swung open as he and Hartwood disappeared, and Lyle was soon to follow when the aging doctor stopped her.

"Lyle?" he called, making her turn and her fly out behind her, as she let out a half-hearted 'hm?' in reply. "You have blood under her nails." Glancing down, the woman saw red turning black under her bitten nails.

"Huh. Guess I do," she answered, shrugging her shoulders. "Anything else?"

"Did you kill someone, Lyle?" Without a second's thought, the woman burst into a fit of giggles, leaning against the glass door that was still open.

"Right, sure. That's totally how it got there." Laughing under her breath, Lyle fell through the door and into the corridor and glancing back into the office as the door shut.

"I'll be back in a minute," she called, turning on her heels and striding off down the hall.

The doctor in the glass-walled office watched as she went until she disappeared around the corner, before falling into his chair and leaning back, dropping his cane to the floor. Staring at his desk, he read the name on the bronze plaque that sat at the very front, and grinned to himself. _Gregory House, M.D._


	2. Chapter 2

I'm soooooo sorry it has taken so long for this update. Real life is complicated and time-consuming. Thank you to everybody who has followed, favourited and reviewed. I'm going to try my very, very hardest to update as often as possible. Enjoy!

_Beep, beep _went her pager, and Lyle stopped browsing through E.R files to check it, pulling it out of her pocket and glancing down at it with blue eyes as she stood among the bustling emergency room, the wailing of ambulance sirens loud in her ears, even through the doors and walls of the hospital. The message on her pager was clear enough, and the young doctor instantly dropped the medical file she'd ben flicking through onto the desk and, shoving her beeper back into her pocket, sprinted across the E.R, expertly dodging doctors and patients and narrowly avoiding crashing into the department head as she did.

By the time she'd taken four flights of stairs three at a time, the white walls and glass of the hospital corridors flashing by dizzyingly fast, and staggered into the patient's room, she saw Hartwood dragging one hand through his dark air and the mother of the teenager they were treating pacing the room, from one end to the other, with flushed cheeks and tears staining her face, her high-heeled boots clattering against the floor with each step.

"What happened?" Lyle panted, leaning on the door and breathing hard from her dash through the hospital, pushing golden brown hair out of her eyes.

"Lucy had a tonic-clonic seizure, straight after we started the antibiotics," Hartwood explained, sighing to himself. "Taylor's rerunning the blood samples, but I don't think it's an infection; I've kept her on the antibiotics, just in case they come back positive."

"So, you have no idea what's wrong with her?" the mother piped up with a shaking voice, stopping her pacing and staring at them with wide, terrified eyes. Lyle and Hartwood looked at each other with a shared expression, that was universal among doctors, and meant one thing: _No, we don't._

"We're… working on it," Lyle improvised, glancing at the patient's vitals and her still body lying in the hospital bed. Lucy Courtfield's face was pale, as if someone had painted it pure white, and her breathing seemed steady as her chest rose and fell beneath the sheets. She'd lost consciousness and probably wouldn't wake up for another couple of hours, meaning the antibiotics should be working by the time she opened her eyes. If it was a simple infection that was plaguing her, of course. There was a deep red cut on her lip, clearly from where she'd bitten it during her seizure, and the blood was dripping onto her chin as she breathed. Her mother half-consciously wiped it away.

"Maybe we should wait until she wakes up?" Hartwood offered, his voice mostly lost among the shouting of his fellow doctors. Even House was occasionally joining in the argument with something more than snide comments.

"Her white count is too low for it to be an infection!" Taylor exclaimed, slamming the results to the blood tests onto the table.

"Her white count is raised!" Lyle shouted back. House continued to watch the two doctors as they fought, as if he was watching a tennis match, his head swivelling from side to side like a bird checking for predators.

"Barely raised! She could have a cold and it would explain her white count," Taylor shot back, glaring at House as he opened his mouth to say something, before closing it against as he thought better.

"You took the blood _after _you gave her the antibiotics. They could be working and fighting the infection, which is why her white count is low!"

"The antibiotics caused a seizure. No way they're _helping _her."

"Or…" House interrupted, waving his cane in the air and making all three instinctively duck away from the mad man before recovering their positions and glaring at each other across the tale – or, in Hartwood's case, looking increasingly fed up. "The seizure could be a…" He was returned with nothing but blank looks. "It could be a… starts with s…?"

"Symptom?" all three echoed, clearly not having thought of the possibility before.

"Yes, children," he patronized, standing up and patting each one of the them on the head as he walked around the table before scribbling another symptom on the board: _Seizures._

"Seizures can be caused by infections," Lyle pointed out. "We should keep her on the antibiotics."

"Keeping her on antibiotics could cause side effects that'll make it harder for us to diagnose her," Taylor argued.

"Which we won't have to do if it _is _an infection!" As if someone had flicked the switch, the two dissolved into another argument, and House continued to lean on his cane and watch with a mildly interested expression on his face.

"Or we could wait until she wakes up!" Hartwood finally shouted, slamming his hand down on the table and making Lyle and Taylor almost leap up from their chairs in surprise. "If she's no better when she wakes up, we can go right back to DDX-ing. If she does, we can prescribe a course of antibiotics and send her home."

"Lanky as a point," House agreed, collapsing into his chair and dropping his cane down beside him, putting his feet up on the desk with a _thump. _"Hartwood, take the kid's blood every half an hour. Check her white count. Lyle, go convince the mom we know what we're doing. Taylor…" He waved his hands vaguely and shrugged his shoulders. "Buy me lunch. Chop chop, off you go."

In a flurry of papers and white coats, the three doctors were halfway down the corridors to do their respective jobs, the glass door swinging shut behind them.


End file.
